French PM says 6 attacked Burkina Faso hotel, 3 on loose

When al Qaeda-linked terrorists stormed a hotel and cafe in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Friday evening, they killed an estimated 28 people.

At least 14 foreigners – four Canadians, three Ukrainians, two French nationals, two Portuguese, two Swiss and a Dutch person – were killed in the hotel attack, according to a government toll.

President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said the people of Burkina Faso must unite in the fight against “terrorism”.

Fighters from a militant group affiliated to Al Qaeda attacked the Capuccino restaurant and the Splendid Hotel on Friday night.

Video footage has emerged showing two jihadis standing next to burning cars more than an hour after a fatal assault on a hotel and cafe in Burkina Faso’s capital, raising new questions about why it took so long for security forces to arrive.

In a statement released online, the group said that the attack was “a new message from the heroic champions of Islam, with their blood and their bodies, to the slaves of the cross, the occupiers of our homes, the looters of our wealth, and who would undermine our security”.

Six Quebecers on a humanitarian mission were killed in the attack.

Until recently Burkina Faso had largely escaped the tide of Islamist violence spreading in the restive Sahel region and the hotel assault will heighten fears that jihadist groups are casting their net wider in search of targets in west Africa.

“I started wondering what these Peul herders were coming to do in a place like this?” she recalled.

Another attack also occured in northern Burkina Faso over the weekend. Riddering, who once managed a yacht outfitting company in Cooper City, Florida, and his wife, a graphic designer, sold their property and possessions and moved to the town of Yako to run the Les Ailes de Refuge orphanage in 2011, Boyle said. Thirty others were still hospitalized, and about 180 had been freed by French and Burkina Faso forces during and after the siege, he said.

Barry would not comment on the arrest, but an intelligence official in Niger said Rhoubeid had been picked up when he returned to the Splendid Hotel, where he had been staying, to collect his belongings.

An armored vehicle from the Burkina Faso army secures a street outside the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on 15 January 2016.

“Finally the other two attackers came out to fire upon us and it was around 7 a.m. that we killed the last two on the terrace of the Taxi Brousse”, he added.